Today’s title for this blog post should surprise nobody. Today is, after all, the last day of the year, a day on which we regularly review the year just ending, perhaps with an eye toward things we want to remember and what we would like to forget. Making an honest assessment is not always the easiest activity of the year but is a good way to spend at least a little time before moving on to what we hope to accomplish or become in 2016.

The first lines of Psalm 96 became my impetus for reflection: Come, sing to God, O earth, sing out this song anew, and bless God’s holy name in praise, for day to day we are renewed, restored, refreshed again by glory’s light. Proclaim good news among the nations of the earth, tell all the peoples everywhere God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does. (vs. 1-3) I can’t help but be amazed every day, not only by the number of people who have visited and read these blog posts (I have access to a statistics page) but also the places from which the visitors come. This year alone we’ve had 7,699 views (or more while I’ve been writing now!) by people from 77 countries all around the world! This is such a miracle to me and I am grateful for the privilege of this connection. I also feel responsible for this and all the activities that we offer at The Sophia Center for Spirituality in Binghamton and Endicott, New York, hoping that those who visit us (either in person or virtually through technology) are nourished in their spiritual life by their contact with us. I have met amazing people through this work as well as in our WisdomSchools (see http://www.wisdomswork.com for explanation and information) and have grown immensely myself in these encounters.

My gratitude for the work I do now is in large part due to the generous grant from the estate of my dear friend, Helen Daly, who grasped the potential of the study of the Wisdom tradition of Christianity in which we had been engaged for seven years at the time of her death. My sense of responsibility to that gift now calls me to extend the opportunity to join the work we are doing to all who have benefited from it thus far. You may have noted the addition of a “Donate” button on this blog page. There is also now a donations page on our website, http://www.thesophiacenterforspirituality.org where you will find a more detailed explanation of our reasoning and our hopes for the coming year. If you have never visited our website, today might be a good day to see a more global (or in one way a more local) sense of who we are. All that we do and hope that people support harks back to those words of the psalm, for it is truly God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does that is my purpose in writing.

May 2016 see a deepening of understanding for each of us so that God’sways become more and more the ways of the world and may our appreciation of the wonders that God does guide us in all that we do and become in this new year.

It must’ve been an amazing experience to hear the impassioned messages of St. Paul. This morning I can only imagine the gathering in Ephesus catching fire when he proclaims to them that they are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God! (EPH 2:19-22) When he adds the claim that – in Christ Jesus – they are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit, I wonder how many in the crowd were convinced right away, which ones had to ponder and discuss the message and who turned away finding it all too difficult to believe. Once again I am thrown back to images of the crowds lining the streets in our country (or anywhere) to get a glimpse of Pope Francis. There is something palpable about the energy of an event like that and about the outpouring of love that accompanies the one bringing the message.

What does it mean to us today to be “members of the household of God?” Clearly we are called to a greater consciousness, as Richard Rohr says, that “everything belongs” and that we have responsibility in the global community. The psalmist reminds us today of the reach of that responsibility when proclaiming in Psalm 19 that “the heavens proclaim the glory of God and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork…” Just as we are to hear the words of our brothers and sisters in need (perhaps especially the hordes of refugees in Eastern Europe at this moment), we need to be attentive to the groanings of Earth, working to correct our misuse of her resources. And we can’t depend on daily reminders of our place in this household. It’s time for us to act as mature members, listening to the inner promptings of love and recognition, caring for this dwelling place of God that has been given to us as gift.